Field of Endeavor
The present invention generally relates to a system and a method for non-intrusive monitoring. The present invention more particularly relates to a system and a method for non-intrusive monitoring at device level to overview technical installations to identify devices that cause loss of resources.
Brief Description of the Related Art
Waste and overconsumption of resources are a major concern in modern society, because it leads to both environmental and economic problems. A significant part of the wasted resources origins from dysfunctional or inefficient devices. Dysfunctional devices may lead to waste of resources because the intended production is damaged or even lost, whereas inefficient devices may lead to overconsumption of resources to obtain the desired production.
From industrial production it is well known that present and emerging problems can be identified, and overconsumption of resources reduced, by continuous monitoring at level of the single production devices. The challenge of the present systems is, however, that the expenses to install and operate the entire set of needed specialized technologies limit the areas of use. Moreover, such monitoring systems are often complicated to retrofit at existing device installations, and difficult to fit acceptable into the designs.
The so-called non-intrusive monitoring (NILM) systems that apply a technique that, e.g., determines the electrical load composition of a household through a single point of measurement at the main power feed are well known. The technique is described by G. W. Hart in the paper “Residential energy monitoring and computerized surveillance via utility power flows” in Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 12, 16, June 1989.
This technique, however, is unable to handle a complex electrical setup, and to overcome the challenge it has been proposed to add simple sub-metering electricity sensors in the installation, to distinguish devices with similar energy flow. EP2489987A2 discloses a system for non-invasive energy flow monitoring. The system includes one or more device embodiments that include a transformer configured to couple the device to a circuit conductor that is coupled to an additional device. The system moreover has a detection module configured to detect a change in a power signal over the circuit conductor, and a transmission module configured to transmit a unique signal associated with the additional device over the circuit conductor, if the change in the power signal meets or exceeds a particular threshold.
Even such more advanced NILM approaches are, however, often unable to forecast and estimate emerging problems and/or overconsumption of resources. In dynamic systems, such as ventilation, hygienisering or food production, it is typically insufficient to know, e.g., the flow of electricity, to be able to model the actual performance of the system.
When multiple sources of variation affects the latent (e.g. underlying) dynamic (e.g., evolving) stochastic process it is virtually impossible to model the stochastic process efficiently by the methods of the prior art. The only alternative is therefore, the expensive and complicated monitoring technologies known, e.g., from industry.
To be more specific, there is need for a system that can be retrofitted at an existing installations (in a building by way of example), to give an overview of the performance of critical devices. There is also need for the system to estimate and predict the activity, energy consumption and/or resource flow (for instance heat, power and/or ventilation) of the critical devices.
Accordingly, one aspect of the present invention includes a system for monitoring resource flow(s) at a number of devices, which system is less expensive and complicated than the prior systems that apply traditional monitoring technologies.
Another aspect the present invention includes a system that is capable of estimating and predicting the activity, energy consumption, and/or resource flow (e.g., heat, power and/or ventilation) of a number of predefined devices.